Friday, September 11, 2009

Everywhere signs

by Barca Blog - Vanderbilt's new no-huddle offense triggered one of the most impressive outputs in recent school history last Saturday against Western Carolina. The uptempo attack ran on all cylinders, piling up 45 points and 620 total yards to rank the Commodores fourth in the NCAA in total offense to start 2009.

But this week will be drastically different as the Commodores travel to one of the loudest places in the country -- LSU's Tiger Stadium. You can expect 90,000+ fans to create havoc on every down. That being said, how will the noise effect the 'Dores offensive routine outside of Nashville?

"It certainly has the capability of causing problems," head coach Bobby Johnson said during Wednesday's SEC Teleconference. "Once you get past a certain noise level, you can’t hear in any stadium to tell you the truth. Hopefully our signaling system will be good enough that we can get the calls in. Since we’re not huddling, we hope it will prevent us from having too many situations where we don’t have time left on the play clock."

The Commodores' offense relies heavily on non-verbal signals from the sidelines to communicate with the quarterback, running backs and wide receivers prior to each play. One of the challenges, though, will be when the quarterback has to use his voice (over the crowd) to relay the call to his linemen. Last week, Vanderbilt ran into very few problems using this system, only committing three penalties, none of which had to do with delay of game. That same focus and efficiency will be needed in Death Valley Saturday.

"It is by history a tough place to play and we’re not taking it lightly," Johnson added. "We’re trying to make sure everyone’s paying attention and doing what they can. We’ll see if we can be as efficient in this game as we were in the first game."